Shifting gears away from the bridge issue and the politics surrounding it, Matthew Moroun and I discussed the Gateway Project controversy, plans to renovate the iconic Michigan Central Station and how the Moroun organization manages its local real estate holdings.

Jeff Wattrick: Let’s talk about the Gateway. Where is that process right now?

Matthew Moroun: I can’t remember exactly when the judge handling the dispute between us and MDOT ordered that our work should be done by January 11, 2012, what date he ordered that. But we have every intention of and are working toward completing our portion of the Gateway by or about that time.

JW: The whole thing sort of begs the question why there was a hassle in the first place, and the way I want to ask that to you is, obviously DIBC has very good lawyers, there was an agreement put together in writing, lawyers reviewed it, did they just not do a good job?

MM: No, it’s not the agreement. It’s not the lawyers. It’s the fact that the same partner we were positively moving forward with on the Gateway to make the Ambassador Bridge the best crossing that it could be, the same partner that agreed that everything done for the Gateway should accommodate a new bridge alongside the Ambassador Bridge, the same partner that called themselves our partner decided to dump us and become a partner of Canada on a competitive bridge six blocks away.

So, I mean, imagine if you were going through a divorce, but at the same time you had to live with your former spouse for a long period of time. Not only did you have to live with them, but had to work on an incredibly important, very expensive project with them too. I mean, it’s very difficult. We got dumped and we still have to work with them just the same. They don’t like us, and they want to make their New International Trade Crossing the best bridge it can possibly be and it can’t be the best bridge it can possibly be if they don’t knock the Ambassador Bridge a little bit, and that’s what happened in the middle of the project.JW: Sure, there’s obviously this disconnect in terms of the goal, or maybe not the goal of the project, but scope of the work.

MM: Sure, but let me say this, if MDOT wasn’t working on their own bridge proposal six blocks away, I guarantee you we wouldn’t have any trouble on the Gateway Project and the project would be done by now.

JW: Nonetheless, given that, if you guys are right about the Gateway Project, there should be a mountain of paperwork, scopes of work, memoranda of understand, etc etc that says this is what it is and this what the Bridge Company is doing…

MM: You mean why didn’t we prevail in court despite all of that?

JW: Yeah.

MM: Of course, I believe we should have. Do I believe we were right? Yeah. But at this point, that’s not very important. What’s important is the court has ordered us to complete what the court believes is our portion of the Gateway Project. We’re just going to do it and follow what the courts have asked us to do.

You’re asking me if I still think that our company was right originally, yeah, I still think we were but that’s not the point anymore. The point is, at least for purposes of the trial court, we lost and we are doing what the trial court is telling us to do. You don’t win ‘em all.

JW: Let’s move on to maybe a happier topic. The train station is looking better…

MM: The long-term plan is to make something of the train station. To get some real interest in there, and get some people in there, and get some real activity, and make it a very important building to own and be part of the city and part of Michigan Avenue and southwest Detroit.

We don’t have every single commitment and agreement and plan figured out to go all the way the nth degree on that, but we have the first steps. I don’t know who said it but someone said somebody said it starts with the first step, and that’s what we’re trying to do with the depot by cleaning it up, taking out all the asbestos, making sure it’s water tight by putting a new roof on. New roofs, there’s five of them. Putting in new windows, cleaning up all the debris and so on and making it secure. I’d call that, maybe, phase one.

Phase two might be even more of the same type of thing. Maybe addressing the elevators and, I don’t know, put in an HVAC system and so forth. I don’t know when the opportunity comes to get the right group or groups or business interests and get some activity there, but I think that is going to come. The important part is we take the first step.

JW: I know at various times there’s talk about leaving the depot and demolishing the tower…

MM: Some people don’t like the tower, I haven’t figured that out. You’re not the first person to say that to me.JW: I’ve heard people talk about it. I’d love to see it all there, personally. But what to you guys see as viable?

MM: Right now, we’re not planning on ripping any of it down. We’re planning on putting a new roof on the tower just like the lobby area. We’re planning to put new windows on the tower, just like the lobby area. We’re going to clean out the asbestos and the debris from the tower too. Maybe some of the garages or freight dock areas underneath the depot that go underneath the railroad area, maybe those wouldn’t be necessary anymore, but other than something like that we want to keep the opportunity open. That’s why we’re putting significant money in there. We’re not going to cut anything off yet.

JW: There’s talk about a national revival of rail as a passenger service, that’s probably a long time off to get back to what it was 60 or 70 years ago, but do you see the train station as being a train station again?

MM: It should be. I mean someone told me they saw Secretary LaHood make the announcement about the federal grant for the little bit of trackage improvements that seem very costly to me, but he was making it from some sort of makeshift building they were labeled as a rail depot.

[ED: The LaHood rail announcement was made at the Amtrak station in New Center. While that’s not a makeshift building, it is—to be charitable—a very forgettable one.]

But the best place to do rail from is the train station. That’s what it was built for. But we’re not going to depend on, we’re not making our investment in the depot, we’re not trying to revive the depot based on only that. I think it’s a great idea, but if rail doesn’t come to pass at the depot then we’re going with the mission we’re on.JW: What’s the x-factor to do it now?

MM: The physical state of the building, coupled with community pressure, media pressure and my family’s own discussions—deciding what are we going to do with this thing? All culminated in a decision that said: We aren’t going to tear it down, and if we aren’t going to tear it down then we gotta preserve it. And that’s how ended up moving on with the phase we are in now.JW: There’s a website, umm, with your father’s name attached to it…MM: Right, I heard about that.JW: Ok, and it shows a lot of properties they claim are owned by you guys and are not well-maintained. I guess what’s interesting to me about it is it would seem, in the grand scheme of your business activities, it wouldn’t be a huge prohibitive expense to improve the upkeep on these properties. Why hasn’t that happened? Is there a re-doubling of effort to be a good landlord, or a better landlord?

MM: Firstly, we don’t lease residential space to anyone. It’s not our business. We don’t buy houses in the city of Detroit to lease them to somebody…JW: Well, maybe I should say land owner instead of landlord.

MM: Right, ok. We lease to commercial interests sometimes, but not residential. The website—the person responsible for real estate for our company researched the properties that were on the website and what he found was that very few if any of the properties that are on the website are even owned by our company and I’d be happy to give you a copy of the email he sent me. The lot numbers and so on.JW: Sure, I’d like to see that.

MM: A lot of the properties that we’ve purchased at either the Wayne County auction or the city auction, which I think happens once a year or something like that. Some of the auctions in the past lead you to believe you might only be paying $500 for one these lots, by the way. So they might lead you to believe there’s no building on the lot, so you go to the auction, you pay the 500 bucks, you drive by after the auction and—holy smokes—there’s a burnt out crackhouse on the lot I thought was vacant. What we’ve done with those is we’ve systematically filed the proper paperwork and demolished them.

I don’t know this for a fact because I don’t know how to get the data, but other than the city of Detroit or the county, no one, we’re probably third for most demolitions within the city limits of Detroit. We’ve bought a lot of properties that are ugly, and we’ve torn a lot of them down. If you happen to drive by a property we own that has an ugly looking building on it—unless you think the depot is ugly—a few months later if you drive by you probably won’t see that building there. By the time you apply the paperwork, get the asbestos out of it, get clearance from whatever city department or county department that approves the demolition, it’s down.

So, in this particular instance, I don’t know where they got those properties from because we don’t even own them.

JW: What—and I don’t ask this in terms of specific plans because they may be in flux or they be something you don’t necessarily share yet—but what is the grand vision for the properties that you guys have purchased?

MM: Each one is a little different. My dad is 84-years-old, he grew up in Detroit when it was at its pinnacle and over the years he has, and other folks in our company have had dreams and concepts and unfortunately a lot of them haven’t come true, but many of them have.

We started buying property of what they now call the I-94 industrial park, in fact we owned some property in the I-94 industrial park in the early 1950s, but it wasn’t until 2003 or 4 that we built a state-of-the-art 3,000 square foot logistics center for Chrysler Corporation there, and now there’s between 3 and 500 people that work there. That’s been a success.

Other properties we’ve bought in the city, well, like a lot of things in the city their success is yet to come, but we were successful at what they now call the I-94 industrial park. By the way, even after the auto demise of 2009, it’s still running and working well.

We were also successful; we bought an old derelict piece of property from Chrysler on the east side of Detroit across from the Jefferson North Assembly Plant. I think it was actually the old Jefferson plant and that sat vacant for more than 10 years—maybe less than 15—but today there’s a sprawling logistics center on that. It also employs about the same number, I’d say closer to 400. It looks great. It’s an asset to the area.

We were able to do the same thing on Central Avenue probably about 8 blocks north of I-94, close to Dearborn. The same thing. Of course we’ve developed a lot around the bridge. We’ve made that area a lot nicer. Obviously if you don’t like cars and trucks, then maybe you don’t think that’s nicer, but it really does look a lot better and we’ve cleaned it up.

So, not every one of these property acquisitions has turned out great, but a number have. I’d expect in the future some of the ones we’ve bought and people say “well, geez, what the heck are they going to do with that,” I think something good will come just like it has in the past.

We wrap up with a discussion about the Moroun family’s public image and their legacy tomorrow.